Roundabout’s overall aim is that no young person under 25 should have to experience sleeping rough and we are committed to making sure that this doesn’t happen.
Whilst our Homeless Prevention Service is there for anyone who needs support and advice, in 2018 we found that not all vulnerable young people were coming to our drop-in to seek help. Sadly, we began to see rough sleepers in Sheffield who were aged under 25. These young people immediately became our priority, leading to us developing a new street outreach team called Rapid Rehousing.
We now have dedicated workers who actively go out into the community, identify homeless young people who need intensive support and help them to access accommodation and develop their long term living skills.
“This group of young people have extremely complex needs and often can’t access mainstream housing and homeless services as they are quite chaotic, often experiencing early child hood and continued trauma, have general ill health and undiagnosed health conditions, and can often be taken advantage of by older homeless people. They can be very wary of help from our services for various reasons – they may have even been excluded from services in the past.
Our incredible staff work across the city in all weathers, trying to engage with these young people, sometimes just sitting on the floor with them in the rain over weeks trying to establish trust until eventually, we can encourage and support them to come off the streets and into one of our properties.
Here, we provide wrap-around support from our staff and other specialist services so they can start the process of healing and recovery and start to live meaningful lives in their own home.”
Tracey Jackson, Roundabout’s Deputy CEO
Thank you to our supporters for enabling us to launch this service with their generous donations and to the Nationwide Foundation and Sheffield City Council for funding the service’s future.
To read more about Rapid Rehousing, check out our recent By Their Side campaign.